December 10, 2005

Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.

So when homosexuality was unpopular, it was a mental disorder. Now that it's popular, not liking it is a mental disorder. Evidence for either position? Not much. My diagnosis: How about we recognize a disorder consisting of turning intellectual fashions into pseudoscience? Seems like this is a case of "mental health" consisting largely of agreeing with whatever political opinions psychiatrists hold at a particular moment in time. Psychiatry, heal thyself. (Via Either End).

I might take those who advocate a new diagnosis more seriously if they included hatred of conservatives as another example of pathological bias. But, even then, it’s the individual’s intense hatred that’s the real “disorder” — regardless of its object.